The Space-Time Continuum

Basic helm

Way back in the last millennium our very own Gestalt ventured into
the dank, dark depths of Virgin's stand at ECTS 1999, and to his
delight was shown a Star Trek game with some serious potential - a
3D real time strategy game set just before the events of "Star Trek
VI", and coded by British developers Binary Asylum. It almost
sounded too good to be true...
Well, for Binary Asylum it was, as they ceased trading due to
financial difficulties after being taken off the project by
American publisher Interplay due to "creative differences". Not to
be discouraged, Interplay handed the game to in-house team 14
Degrees East, who could be considered Star Trek experts after their
work on the Starfleet and Klingon Academy games. Flash forward to
September 2000, and after the drama and delays of its interrupted
development cycle, the game has finally been released.
The game starts when a Romulan experiment goes drastically wrong
due to the interference of those meddlesome Klingons, resulting in
a whole system of new planets getting dragged through some kind of
temporal rift. Suddenly there are several new mineral-rich planets
floating around in an area that used to be nothing but empty space.
Cue escalating battles between the Klingons ("Ah .. new planets -
let's kill everyone and take them for ourselves!"), the Romulans
("It was our experiment that brought them here, they are obviously
ours!") and the Federation ("Ah .. strange new worlds - let's
integrate the locals into our dreary existence"), as well as the
added complication of three new races introduced in the game ("Ah
.. erm .. we live here!").
The idea sounds fine in theory, and the game should have appealed
to both Star Trek fans and real-time strategy players alike. But
does the execution of the idea live up to expectations?

I'm A Happy Trekkie

The first thing you will notice on starting the game is that it
looks wonderful - the HUD changes according to race, the terrain
feels authentic, and the skies are a mash of glorious hues. Even
the buildings look how you would expect a Star Trek building to
look.
And all of this is in lustrous 3D, with a flexible camera system
which can do almost anything you would want it to - zooming and
tilting, with everything from a bird's eye view to first person and
chase cams. Sadly though you will spend almost all of your time in
the overhead view, zoomed out as far as possible to get a wider
view of the action. Once in a while, you may think "Oh, let's look
at a different view", but then it's a case of "Oh dear, I can't see
what's happening .. are those my units? No, don't go over there! Oh
hell, are those explosions? Where's everyone gone?". Unlike
Battlezone II, which balanced the different viewpoints
successfully, you get the sense that the various camera options in
New Worlds were just put there to show off the 3D engine.
The missions are suitably complex though, from out and out fighting
to search and rescue, and from scanning ancient crashed ships to
finding a cure for a deadly virus, with all of the appropriate
vehicles to go with it. You even have officers who you can place
within ships to make their scanners, shields or weapons more
efficient, and training these officers in their respective fields
makes them more effective, adding an RPG element to the game.
When you do get into battle the explosions are fantastic, and
photon torpedoes veritably glower as they fly through the sky.
Vessels with cloaking capabilities waver as they disappear, and all
the while typically Trekkish sounds gush forth from your speakers.
It all looks, sounds and feels like a Trek game should.

It's An RTS Jim, But Not As We Know It!

So, that pretty much covers the Trekkies - good looks, great story
and interesting missions will have them grinning inanely and
telling each other to 'live long and prosper', or some such.
Real-time strategy fans, on the other hand, will have a harder time
of it...
With the recent influx of innovative and original strategy games -
such as Shogun, Ground Control and Homeworld - the RTS fan really
expects something special if their attention is to be held for any
length of time, and unfortunately I found New Worlds to be lacking
in many of the basics.
For example, there is no research tree. Yes, you can only construct
certain buildings when others are already present, and certain
vehicles cannot be created until the science block has researched a
disruptor field or some such, but this isn't strictly a research
tree. Instead what tends to happen is that at the beginning of each
mission you spend the first ten minutes upgrading and researching
all of the same things that you already did in the previous
mission, until there is nothing left to do. The problem is that you
have to research lots of different technologies even to create the
most basic of vehicles, so in the end it becomes less of a research
tree and more of a monotonous bush.
Resource collecting is a hassle too - other than a scanner mode
which tells you where certain minerals are residing, there is
nothing to indicate where to build a mine. You can spend many
minutes with the template of a mine, sweeping across the terrain
waiting for it to turn green, indicating that this is a good spot
to build one.
And while I'm at it, how come Kirk can find a lone person hidden in
a cave on a huge world, but I can't scan the planet for the enemy,
or even build some kind of radar? Instead you have to rely on short
range scanner vehicles. To find the enemy you usually have to wait
for them to come to you, and then head off in the direction they
came from.

You Cannae Change The Laws Of Physics

More problems could be caused by the interface. Building is
something of a chore, clicking backwards and forwards between
screens, and having to click on each building to see if it can be
upgraded yet.
Getting your vehicles to actually do what they are told to is a
mission of its own too. If you single click with your mouse the
units will travel to that point, but it's anybody's guess what they
will do when they get there. You can double-click an area, which
brings up a mini-menu of icons, allowing you to order them to fire
at will, protect the area, or even not to fire, but they rarely
seem to take any notice of this, and just merrily blast away at
anything they happen to see. But then sometimes they let enemy
ships wander past and attack the building next to them without even
batting an eyelid! It's also extremely difficult to double-click an
enemy vehice when it is moving, which can get extremely
frustrating.
Most missions seem to degenerate into creating a ton of tanks and
raiding the enemy base, a tactic I thought had finally vanished
from the RTS scene. But probably the most irritating aspect of the
whole thing is the speed - it's so slow! Everything seems to
take an absolute age, which is compounded by the fact that you
can't save the game in the middle of a mission.

Conclusion

If the fact that it is a Star Trek game is enough to sway you to
its cause, then you will no doubt put up with New Worlds'
inadequacies and thoroughly enjoy it. But if you want a serious
real-time strategy game you may want to look elsewhere - the
beautiful graphics and authentic Trek feel aren't enough to
overcome the confused AI, awkward interface and glacially slow pace
in what is ultimately a disappointing game.

5
/
10

Read the Eurogamer.net reviews policyStar Trek : New WorldsTalithReview - Interplay boldly take the Star Trek franchise where no game has gone before, with a ground-based strategy game2000-09-29T17:58:00+01:00510